Graduated from higher education: Different girls about why they decided to finish their studies
A few years ago, incomplete higher was almost a political gesture, especially if study was interrupted at a prestigious university. The diploma seemed to be an obligatory "program point" for parents and a pass to uninteresting work, where not the abilities, but the "crust" are valued. At some point, zeal returned to fashion, and perseverance ceased to be considered an alibi for "mediocrity."
People, of course, may still be disappointed in the education system chosen by the university or profession, but it seems that they have become more conscious in their own way of studying. We talked to girls who decided to finish their studies or to get a higher education at an age not typical for Russian students - and we are satisfied with this decision.
Interview: Margarita Zhuravleva
Kseniya
I studied at the Moscow City Pedagogical University, at the Faculty of Philology, specializing in the teacher of Russian language and literature. Usually, when people hear the name of my university, those who are older wrinkle their foreheads and ask: "Is this Lenin or Krupskaya?" And those who are younger are interested: "Is it on the South-West?" No, no and NO. This is a relatively young university, and my faculty is located at ENEA. Recently, someone from the current students has found another decoding: MGPU - Maybe Somewhere It Will Turn Out. But it was normal there, it's all the jokes of the humanities.
Of course, I wanted to go to MSU - to journalism. But in the last year of school I grew up from a pupil in a party girl. I did not want to strain myself, and I entered the university, which was friends with our school - in fact, supplied its employees after graduation. Although the exams for the journalistic department and the philological department are the same, and I passed them all perfectly, then for the first time in my life I really didn’t want to strain myself.
It was interesting and boring to study at the same time. I only liked to read books and talk about them, and most of the subjects in the first and second courses were absolutely not connected with this: medicine, basic statistics (which, by the way, I really needed now), several different courses in pedagogy and psychology and completely creepy subject "concept of modern science." I realized that I did not like the approach to higher education, the inability to choose subjects, the impossibility of what is now called "positive feedback." And five years is pretty damn long. In the third year I went to work, and in the fourth year I decided not to continue my studies.
Two years ago, approaching a management position at work, I realized that I lacked theoretical knowledge of business and people management. I have been googling different courses in leadership and strategic management for a long time and found three cherished letters of Moscow State University, and alongside three more - an MBA.
So I was at the Faculty of Economics. Having opened the handout at the open door, I was horrified: out of the three hundred pages of graphs and slides, I could not understand anything. But when the teacher began to tell, I experienced that wonderful moment of recognition, of understanding, for which I loved to study and in philology: "Oh, that's it!" And I immediately realized that I was studying, studying and will study not for the sake of diplomas, but for the sake of these moments of knowledge, understanding. Therefore, years after school, studying for me became a process, a hobby, and not the result of a “crust”.
And the thing that everyone is most interested in: I have never been asked for a diploma in any job.
Olya Borisova
After college, where I received a secondary vocational education in the specialty "management in the communications industry," I entered the St. Petersburg State University of Telecommunications at the Faculty of Economics and Management. It was the path of least resistance: from childhood I dreamed of becoming an actress and studying at the Mokhovaya Theater Academy, even preparing a program, but at the very last moment I was overcome by an overwhelming horror ("How dare I suppose that I have any talents?") And I chose a boring, gray option. I reassured myself that the hobby does not have to be a job.
After a year and a half, I realized that I could no longer see supply and demand graphs and pricing factors — that was boring. I realized that I didn’t want to study at all: my parents were always too protective of me, I wanted to be independent, to start working, and the university only hindered. I left and got a job as a sales assistant in a communications salon. But at some point I was fed up with sales - I was completely confused and did not understand what to do next. So I got to the police.
I volunteered a lot in college. I always liked to help people, and then I still thought that to become a policeman was to help people. Interns there were trained in four months: tactics of public order, fire, drill, physical, psychological and legal training. Later, when I was still an employee, I entered the Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in order to become an officer and a super cool woman security officer. But I didn’t get to the first session: I ran away from the system of internal affairs bodies, because I soon realized that I wouldn’t become Deborah Morgan from the TV series Dexter.
So I got into political activism and human rights protection: I worked in Open Russia, I helped Masha Alekhina with the book Riot Days, then we put on a performance on it and we toured the world a lot. I learned English, just communicating with people, I almost moved to London to a young man. And all this - consistently ignoring higher education.
At the beginning of this year, I once again thought about what I want. I realized that I did not want to go to London, but I didn’t want to stay in Moscow either. Returned home to St. Petersburg. It was necessary to remember who I was and listen to me. Toward the summer, I began to think about studying, and at first these thoughts were very uncomfortable. I didn’t want to study in Russia: I tried it already, and I didn’t really like it. But to study abroad is the whole adventure: complete immersion in a foreign language, new people, life and the educational process, built on a completely different system.
Israel seemed like a nice place for this, there are a lot of young Russian-speaking repatriates, I have many friends here. I entered college on the first degree, specialty "Communications: visual content". I will study the history of media, documentaries, news reports, advertising, promotion, video editing. I will finish studying at the age of twenty-seven, in the Russian sense I, as a freshman, are already “old-born”, but in the West this is a common story.
"I do not work in the specialty," - say most of my friends. They spent four years (and, possibly, money) on education, which they did not need at all. And I spent four years trying to be a cop, a freelancer, a book editor, an activist, a stranger, and understand what I really want. Now I am in harmony with myself and enjoy what is happening.
Katya Ulyanova
I finished the tenth and eleventh classes as an external student, because from our school it was possible to go to college, and then to Moscow State University of Economics, Statistics and Computer Science. That is, after college you were given the opportunity to get immediately to the fourth year of the institute. After three courses, they gave me a document on intermediate education - if I had to study for another two years, I could get a regular diploma, which is given to university graduates. I was then eighteen years old, and I decided not to study further on marketing. Everything turned out to be much less creative than I thought: it was such a time - the end of zero, the romanticization of marketing and public relations, then the book "99 francs" was also published.
To enter the journalism department, I had to miss a year. This time I worked: in order to go through a creative competition, publications were needed in the media. Dad lied that I continued to study at MESI, while she herself went to the preparatory courses, then to the editorial board of Nashe Radio. I dreamed of journalism and journalism, my mother supported me very much. She died after a long illness, when I studied in the first year - it was important for her that I followed the dream, and I am very glad that she had time to see what I did.
And in the third year I had a child. I decided to take a break and took a sabbatical because I wanted to spend some time with him. I didn’t see anything terrible at the academy, although it was a bit psychologically difficult to come back later. You already feel your age against the rest - the difference is even greater than with other first-year students on admission. Plus baby. Plus, your company has already gone forward - you "fell out" both in mood and in age. On the other hand, it was easier for me, because you are already rebuilding, you understand that you are doing everything for yourself. Education is not for someone, not for a tick, not for a party. You do your job, you need it and no one else.
Ksyusha Chernysheva
I am twenty-nine years old, I am a housewife, mother, wife. This summer I entered the university, and before that I changed three universities. After school, I had no special plans - just next to the house where I was going to live in Moscow, there was the Moscow Academy of Tourist and Hotel and Restaurant Business under the Government of Moscow, and my parents decided that it would be very convenient if I went to college across the road. I was fifteen years old: I went to school at five, graduated at fifteen, and I turned sixteen only in October. I learned the semester and realized that I did not like it all. She began to miss home and family, so she transferred herself to psychology at the institute in Dubna, but did not think that there would be mathematical analysis, linear algebra, probability theory. In general, I did not even pass the exams after the first course.
Then a branch of a very small university — the Academy of Marketing and Management — opened in our city, and everyone there was recruited without exams. I graduated from it, but I never worked in my specialty - and in general, I needed a diploma just like a crust. At that age — I was then probably twenty years old — I did not know at all what I wanted to do. I fell in love, got married. I had a wonderful fun life. My parents kept me, then my husband, and in principle no one set me up that I would need to earn money sometime or that I would like to. I was just drifting.
Gradually, new acquaintances began to appear at me, and I suddenly noticed that young women around me had already built a career, doing something that they were interested in. They have something besides motherhood and marriage. Then I chose foreign languages and teaching Russian as a foreign language. I was embarrassed, of course, that I would come to the first year of a 29-year-old and with a child who would soon go to school, but the dean assured me that everything would be fine.
This summer, I passed the exam. Getting started in about four months, needed Russian, English and literature. I passed the languages very well, but in literature I didn’t have three points before passing. Now I am preparing for the exam again to enter the next year.
Marianne
After school I entered the Faculty of Journalism at St. Petersburg State University, then I transferred to the Journalism Department of Moscow State University - I dreamed of Moscow. In the last courses I went to work on television and realized there that journalism as such does not interest me - I am interested in building, organizing, collecting, but I am not a journalist. All my life I mistakenly assumed that I wanted to be a journalist, simply because I liked the news and political programs.
After that, I entered the Russian Academy of State Service under the President of the Russian Federation - I dreamed of MGIMO, but did not have time to apply. And RAGS was across the road. I studied there for three years, received a master's degree, but, frankly, it was a complete mess. I came - already well, already credited. Everything there was calculated on your consciousness: if you need, you will learn, if not, then we will put something, let you out. Why didn't I leave? I do not quit. In addition, at that moment I was working in the FMS, and there such education was very much encouraged.
In the summer of 2017, I left for America. Long dreamed about it, but I was denied a visa several times. I tried to serve several times and decided that it would be the last - and then suddenly gave. It became clear that if I wanted to stay and work, I would first have to learn, because nobody needs my Russian diplomas. I went to the University of California at Los Angeles for production and now I'm burning with it. I can only now explain why I am getting an education, although in the two previous cases I could not say anything clearly. And how can you even decide at seventeen exactly what you need if you are going to storm before thirty?
Anna Veduta
While still in school I dreamed of entering the Moscow State University, and I wanted to go there so much that I didn’t even apply for anything else. As a result, she entered the faculty of philosophy, the department of political science. When I chose the faculty, I did not dream of a particular job, I rather looked at the list of subjects. In the middle of the second year we had a reform - the faculty of philosophy and the department of political science were divided. I cannot say that we were happy, but we were still lucky: for two years the lecturers of the Faculty of Philosophy taught us lectures.
At the end of the fourth year, I was sure that I would go to graduate school. At that moment, we still had a teaching practice: we conducted seminars with younger students, and I really liked it - I decided that I wanted to do science and teaching. By the end of the fifth year, our faculty became deeply political science, and I realized that we must either seriously prepare for the graduate school of the faculty of philosophy, or go to another place altogether. I chose three for myself: Oxford, Cambridge and LSE (London school of economics).
Immediately after graduation, I went to work in a travel agency to get some money and prepare for exams: I had to pass IELTS and practice writing an essay. In the fall of 2011, I filed documents and waited for an answer. And then the protests began in Moscow. At some point, I saw the post of Alexei Navalny that he was looking for a press secretary. At that moment I already knew that I entered the LSC, but did not receive a scholarship, so I decided to respond to the vacancy, and I was called to this job. This was February 2012. A month later I received a letter that I entered Oxford with a full scholarship. Everything that I dreamed about had come true, but I decided not to go, although it was not an easy decision. We discussed this with Alexei and agreed that I could return to these plans in some time.
After the mayor campaign in Moscow and the process of the Kirovles case ended, I realized that the time had come to take a break from studying. It was the autumn of 2013, I applied for documents and in the spring of 2014 I learned that I entered the magistracy of Columbia University in international relations.
I think education is important. It seems to me that it is useful to learn something new every two or three years. In a year I will be thirty years old, and I would like to study further in the future - not necessarily on programs that give a degree to an outlet.
PHOTO: CB2, Strange Ways, The New York Public Library Shop